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The studio has given a release date for Gravity: November 21, 2012.

George Clooney has agreed to play the lead male astronaut in Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity. Clooney replaces Robert Downey Jr. in the role of the mission commander who has a significant presence in the first act of the thriller.

After rumors that he was losing interest in starring in Gravity, today we learn that Robert Downey Jr. has removed his name from the project. Sandra Bullock is still in talks to play the lead astronaut role.

It was just talk before but now it's a reality: Sandra Bullock is now in negotiations with the studio to play the female astronaut.

Here's an interesting rumor surfacing: according to sources for a movie website, the actress that the studio wants for their leading woman is Sandra Bullock. The Speed star made a ton of money and good will for Warner Bros. when The Blind Side emerged as a major hit last year and then went on to win Bullock the Oscar for Best Actress.

Supposedly the first choice for director Alfonso Cuaron is Natalie Portman, and if she wants the part, she'll have first dibs before Bullock, which is the weird way that Hollywood works: the actress with more buzz to her name this moment (Portman for her role in Black Swan) is a hotter property to bankroll a $100 million dollar CG-heavy movie than the actress that won the Oscar amongst her peers last year. Go figure.

As positive buzz for her performance in Black Swan increased from advance screenings at the recent Telluride and Venice Film Festivals, Warner Bros. has offered the plum female role in Gravity to Natalie Portman. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it was said that Warner Bros. was so confident in Portman in her post-Black Swan career phase that they waived a screen test and directly offered her the part. Now the studio is waiting to hear back from the actress after she reads the latest draft of the $80 million dollar science fiction-thriller.

You can include Blake Lively as one of the two frontrunners to play the female lead role in Gravity. The news comes from Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision blog which lists the Gossip Girl's name along with Scarlett Johansson as the main candidates for the part. THR also states that Marion Cotillard auditioned for the part too, but she doesn't seem to be as wanted a candidate as the other two ladies by the filmmakers.

We also learn more about the female astronaut role. At the time the part was envisioned back when Angelina Jolie was hovering around it, the astronaut is the only survivor outside the space shuttle after debris collides with a Hubble repair crew. The character was also a mother and her desire to get safely back to Earth to be reunited with her daughter was her primary reason to try and survive. It's unclear whether the daughter story point would be dropped as both Lively and Johansson are both younger than Jolie and haven't played mother roles in their careers.

The Playlist is reporting that Scarlett Johansson is keen on reuniting with her Iron Man 2 co-star Robert Downey Jr. in Gravity. The site reports that the actress has "verbally agreed" to play the shuttle crew's medical engineer in the movie.

According to The Playlist, there's a 20-minute opening scene in Gravity that Alfonso Cuaron wants to make to introduce the zero-g world of outer space to audiences. The effects will be created by Framestore, a U.K.-based special effects company now soliciting for new hires to work on the project which the company is calling as ambitious as Avatar.

The IMAX Corporation have reaffirmed its commitment to release up to 20 new Warner Bros. films over the next three years. One of the films that IMAX announced as being on the list was Gravity. [Full story]

Talks have started between Iron Man lead Robert Downey Jr. and the makers of Gravity. The plan would be for Downey to film Gravity for Alfonso Cuaron this summer in London before working on the Sherlock Holmes sequel which is scheduled to commence filming in the fall. Downey would play the commander of the space station and be one of the movie's two main leads (the other being the female astronaut that Angelina Jolie was attached to play at one point.)

Deadline's Mike Fleming sums up the movie in this words: "Downey will play the leader of a team posted at a remote space station. While he and a female colleague are traveling outside the space station, the other team members are decimated by debris from an exploded satellite."

Entertainment Weekly checked up on yesterday's report by Vulture and got word that Jolie is no longer still interested in starring in Gravity. At this point the involvement of Warner Bros. is still unconfirmed.

Word breaks that Angelina Jolie may have exited starring in the sequel to Wanted because Universal Pictures dropped development of a science fiction thriller called Gravity. Is there any truth to the rumor? [Full story]